Imagine you’re a reporter covering an influx of immigrants in your town. They’re hungry and have nowhere to go. They’re barely surviving. But you did nothing to help them. After all, it’s not your job as a journalist. But later, it weighs on you. Should you — could you — have done something?
Or: You’re working on a moving story about children in a local shelter. It was the website’s most-read story for days. But amid the accolades, you have a sinking feeling that you’ve benefited from the suffering of others.
Or: You’re an editor managing a story about mass shootings at a local school. The reporting goes on for weeks, and the repeated accounts from parents and other relatives of victims about the failures of your own community’s institutions like law enforcement are starting to weigh on you. You cannot get these stories out of your mind even when you’re not at work.
These soul-crushing feelings have a name: Moral injury.
